Who among those who have read the Gospels does not know that Christ makes all human suffering his own?
—Origen, On Prayer1
Theodicy is a branch of theology that has developed many arguments on how there can be a God, a good God, or a just God in the presence of so much evil in the world—about which “God” appears to do nothing, except an individual “change of heart” here and there? Especially when such changed hearts have not been in control of most of history, even in the churches.
The evidence is overwhelming that God fully allows and does not stop genocides, the abuse of children, brutal wars, unspeakable human and animal suffering, the imprisonment of the innocent, the sexual enslavement of girls, the regular death of whole species and civilizations, the tragic lives of addicts and their codependents. Further, God seems to fully “cause,” or at least allow, the “natural” disasters of drought, flood, hurricane, tornado, tsunami, plague, infestation, physical handicap, mental illness, and painful disease of every kind, many of which we call “acts of God,” and all of which have made much of human life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”2 What are we to do with this?
At my level of observation, any belief in a deus ex machina God, who jumps in to correct and improve things, any “god of the gaps” who quickly fills in for our ignorance and evil, is not what I see. Any “omnipotent God” who actually operates omnipotently is clearly not the pattern, and that is after years of thinking I have to run to God’s defense, as if God needed me! I do not see any all-powerful God taking power at all. It is very disappointing on most levels, and frankly boggles the rational mind, if that is what a rational mind expects from the Divine. There has to be a better framing of both the question and any possible answer. Exactly how is God loving and sustaining what God created? That is our dilemma.
For me, there is a workable and loving way through this. If God is somehow in the suffering, participating as a suffering object too, in full solidarity with the world that He or She created, then I can make some possible and initial sense of God and this creation. Then I stop complaining long enough to sit stunned and awakened by the very possibility. At least if we are participating in something together, and human suffering has some kind of direction or cosmic meaning, I can forgive such a God for leaving us in what seems like such desperate straits, and maybe I can even find love and trust for such a God.
Only if we are not alone in this universe, can we tolerate our aloneness. Only if there is a bigger and better outcome, can we calm down and begin to listen and look. Only if human suffering is first of all and last of all divine suffering can we begin to connect any dots. Only if we are joining God, and God is joining us, in something greater than the sum of all its parts, can we find a way through all of this. I do know a number of individuals for whom this act of trust was enough to keep their heads high and their hearts open, even in hell. Trust in the crucified—and resurrected—Jesus has indeed “saved” many.
I personally don’t know how any of the contrived arguments of theology and theodicy finally help or convince anyone, except for those who have met the one Christians call a crucified God. The rest just have to split or deny. Many of the happiest and most peaceful people I know love a God who walks with crucified people, and thus reveals and “redeems” their plight as his own. For them, Jesus is not observing human suffering from a distance but is somehow in human suffering with us and for us. He includes our suffering in the co-redemption of the world, as “all creation groans in one great act of giving birth” (Romans 8:22). Is this possible? Could it be true that we “make up in our own bodies all that still has to be undergone for the sake of the Whole Body” (Colossians 1:24)? Are we somehow business partners with the divine?
Is this the way that we matter? Is this the price of our inclusion inside of the Great Mystery that God has lived first and foremost? Is God truly and forever a Great Outpouring, as the Trinitarian pattern seems to say? When I see animals and plants and even the stars die so willingly and offer their bodies for another generation, or another species, or the illumination of the universe, I begin to see the one pattern everywhere. It is the truest level of love, as each and every thing offers itself for another. Would any of us even learn to love at all if it was not demanded of us, taken from us, and called forth by human tears and earthly tragedy? Is suffering necessary to teach us how to love and care for one another? I really believe that it is—by observation!
What Breathing Under Water Might Really Be
If you see where this “logic” is going, I am indeed saying that only people who have suffered in some way can save one another—exactly as the Twelve Step Program discovered. Deep communion and dear compassion is formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure. I do not know why that is true. We are not saved by any formulas or theologies or any priesthood extraneous to the human journey itself. “Peter, you must be ground like wheat, and once you have recovered, then you can turn and help the brothers” (Luke 22:31–32), Jesus says to Peter. Was that his real ordination to ministry? No other is ever mentioned. I do believe this is the only ordination that matters and transforms the world. Properly ordained priests might help bread and wine to know what it is, but truly ordained priests help people to know who they are, as they “help the brothers (and sisters).”
Only those who have tried to breathe under water know how important breathing really is, and will never take it for granted again. They are the ones who do not take shipwreck or drowning lightly, they are the ones who can name “healing” correctly, they are the ones who know what they have been saved from, and the only ones who develop the patience and humility to ask the right questions of God and of themselves.
You see, only the survivors know the full terror of the passage, the arms that held them through it all, and the power of the obstacles that were overcome. All they can do is thank God they made it through! For all the rest of us it is mere speculation, salvation theories, and “theology.”
Theirs are no longer the premature requests for mere physical healing, or pure medical cures, as the lepers and the blind in the Gospels first imagined. Those who have passed over are now inside a much Bigger Picture. They know they are still and forever alcoholics, but something better has been revealed—and given to them—in the very process of passing over, which they can alone know from the other side. Only after the second laying on of Jesus’ hands could the blind man at Bethsaida say, “Now I can see clearly, plainly, and distinctly” and know that he “was cured” (Mark 8:25). There is the first laying on of hands where “people look like trees walking around” (8:24), which might symbolize the initial stage of recovery from the mere physical addiction. The full emotional, spiritual, and relational illumination only comes with time, when we can see “clearly, plainly, and distinctly.” The second healing is the more important one.
Those who have passed over eventually find a much bigger world of endurance, meaning, hope, self-esteem, deeper and true desire, but most especially, a bottomless pool of love both within and without. Their treasure hunt is over, and they are home, and home free! The Eastern fathers of the church called this transformation theosis, or the process of the divinization of the human person. This deep transformation is not achieved by magic or miracles or priestcraft but by a “vital spiritual experience” that is available to all human beings. It leads to an emotional sobriety, an immense freedom, a natural compassion, and a sense of divine union that is the deepest and most universal meaning of that much-used word salvation. Only those who have passed over know the real meaning of that word—and that it is not just a word at all.
It is at precisely this point that the suffering God and a suffering soul can meet. It is at this point that human suffering makes spiritual sense, not to the rational mind, the logical mind, or even the “just and fair” mind, but to the logic of the soul, which I would state in this way:
Suffering people can love and trust a suffering God,
Only a suffering God can “save” suffering people,
Those who have passed across this chasm can and will save one another.
Any other god becomes a guilty bystander, and one that you will not deeply trust, much less love. Christians should not, however, insist that “my Higher Power is better than your Higher Power.” This is love of self and not love of God. But it is still good for Christians to know that their Jesus was made to order for the transformative problems of addiction and human suffering. From the cross, he draws all suffering people to himself.
What humiliated and wounded addict cannot look on the image of the crucified Jesus and see himself or herself? Who would not rush toward surrender and communion with such a crucified God, who against all expectations, shares in our powerlessness, our failure, and our indignity? Who would not find himself revealed, renamed, and released inside of such a God? As theologian Sebastian Moore said many years ago in a book of the same name, “the crucified Jesus is no stranger.” Jesus is no stranger to history, no stranger to the soul, no stranger to any who have suffered—but a stranger to all others—even to many Christians. Jesus is more than anything else the God of all who suffer—more than any tribal god that can be encompassed in a single religion. Jesus is in competition with no world religion, but only in nonstop competition with death, suffering, and the tragic sense of life itself. That is the only battle that he wants to win. He wins by including it all inside of his body, “groaning in one great act of giving birth… waiting until our bodies are fully set free” (Romans 8:22–23). Finally, I have an answer!
The Awful Grace of God
The suffering creatures of this world have a Being who does not judge or condemn them, or in any way stand aloof from their plight, but a Being who hangs with them and flows through them, and even toward them in their despair. How utterly different from all the greedy and bloodthirsty gods of most of world history! What else could save the world? What else would the human heart love and desire? And further, this God wants to love and be loved rather than be served (John 15:15). How wonderful is that?! It turns the history of religion on its head.
Jesus said it of himself: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32) and “from my breast will flow fountains of living water” (7:38). It is only the “harsh and dreadful” commingling of both divine love and human tears which opens the deepest floodgates of both God and the soul, and eventually I must believe, it will open history itself. I will sink my anchor here.
To mourn for one is to mourn for all. To mourn with all is to fully participate at the very foundation of Being Itself. For some reason, which I have yet to understand, beauty hurts. Suffering opens the channel through which all of Life flows and by which all creation breathes, and I still do not know why. Yet it is somehow beautiful, even if it is a sad and tragic beauty.
So let me end with the wisdom of a Greek dramatist, which should be another proof that the same Holy Spirit has been guiding all of history. Aeschylus, the Greek dramatist who lived from 525 to 456 bc, was not really before Christ at all, but already presents the one eternal message in concise and poetic verse. It is wisdom available to all of us, at least by our later years—and if we are listening:He who learns must suffer.
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget,
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despair, against our own will,
Comes wisdom to us, by the awful grace of God.3